Page 70 - Gaza

Israel troops battle militants across Gaza, which has been without power

Israeli troops battled Palestinian militants in a dense, urban refugee camp on Tuesday as the army expanded operations across northern Gaza, where residents have been without electricity, water or access to humanitarian aid for weeks. The front line of the war, now in its seventh week, has shifted to the Jabaliya camp, a dense warren of concrete buildings near Gaza City that houses refugees from the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation and their descendants. Israel has been bombarding the area for weeks, and the military said Hamas fighters have regrouped there and in other eastern districts after being pushed out of much of Gaza City. The military said forces are preparing the battlefield in the area of Jabaliya. It said they struck three tunnel shafts where fighters were hiding and destroyed rocket launchers, adding that dozens of militants have been killed in recent days. There was no immediate comment from Hamas, and it was not possible to independently confirm details of the

Ukrainians who fled nation for Israel find themselves living with war again

Tatyana Prima thought she'd left the bombs behind when she fled Ukraine more than a year and a half ago, after Russia decimated her city, Mariupol. The 38-year-old escaped with her injured husband and young daughter, bringing the family to safety in southern Israel. The calm she was slowly regaining shattered again on October 7, when Hamas militants invaded. All these sounds of war that we hear now, they sometimes work as a trigger that brings back memories of what we've gone through in Mariupol, she said. "It's hard feeling like that you're the one responsible for your child, the one who wants what's best for them, and in some way like you've failed them. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, more than 45,000 Ukrainians have sought refuge in Israel, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics and aid groups. Like Prima, most of them were slowly picking up the pieces of their lives and finding ways to cope when the war in Israel erupted. Now they are reliving their traum

Why Israel might win the battle in Gaza but end up losing the war

Biden gave Israel's leaders some good and personally chastening advice: Don't let rage drive you to mistakes the US made after a terror attack on America killed almost 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001

Close to truce agreement with Israel: Hamas chief even as assault continues

Hamas officials are "close to reaching a truce agreement" with Israel and the group has delivered its response to Qatari mediators, Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement sent to Reuters by his aide

Cyprus ready to ship aid to Gaza once a go-ahead is given, says president

Cyprus is ready to immediately begin shipping large quantities of humanitarian aid to Gaza in vessels that can navigate shallow water once conditions on the ground allow for it, the president of the east Mediterranean island nation said Monday. President Nikos Christodoulides said his country's proposal for a maritime corridor from the Cyprus' port of Larnaca to Gaza is the only one currently being discussed on an international level as a feasible way to significantly supplement the trickle of aid getting into the enclave through Egypt's Rafah border checkpoint. Planning for the corridor of about 230 miles (370 kilometers) is essentially completed, and aid can begin to flow when a pause in fighting is declared, Christodoulides said. The Cypriot leader, who has been in regular contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the proposal, said that getting a green light to start the shipments is a complicated matter requiring intricate negotiations in light of the ongoing

Heavy fighting breaks out near another Gaza hospital after babies evacuated

Heavy fighting erupted Monday around a hospital in northern Gaza where thousands of patients and displaced people have been sheltering for weeks, as Israeli forces focus on clearing out medical facilities that they say Hamas militants use for cover. The advance on the Indonesian Hospital came a day after the World Health Organisation evacuated 31 premature babies from Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the territory's largest, where they were among more than 250 critically ill or wounded patients stranded there days after Israeli forces entered the compound. The plight of Gaza's hospitals is at the focus of a battle of narratives over the war's brutal toll on Palestinian civilians, thousands of whom have been killed or buried in rubble since the six-week-old war was sparked by Hamas' Oct 7 rampage into southern Israel. Israel says Hamas uses civilians as human shields, while critics say Israel's siege and relentless aerial bombardment amount to collective punishment of the territory's 2.3

Israel-Gaza war: IDF says it exposed Hamas tunnel under Al-Shifa Hospital

Israeli Army first entered the Al-Shifa Hospital complex a few days ago, alleging that the militant group Hamas used it as a command centre

With world's eyes on Gaza, attacks are on the rise in West Bank now

When Israeli warplanes swooped over the Gaza Strip following Hamas militants' deadly attack on southern Israel, Palestinians say a different kind of war took hold in the occupied West Bank. Overnight, the territory was closed off. Towns were raided, curfews imposed, teenagers arrested, detainees beaten, and villages stormed by Jewish vigilantes. With the world's attention on Gaza and the humanitarian crisis there, the violence of war has also erupted in the West Bank. Israeli settler attacks have surged at an unprecedented rate, according to the United Nations. The escalation has spread fear, deepened despair, and robbed Palestinians of their livelihoods, their homes and, in some cases, their lives. Our lives are hell, said Sabri Boum, a 52-year-old farmer who fortified his windows with metal grills last week to protect his children from settlers he said threw stun grenades in Qaryout, a northern village. It's like I'm in a prison. In six weeks, settlers have killed nine Palestini

Deeply shocked: Antonio Guterres on UN-run schools attacked in Gaza

He added by saying that several women and children who were seeking shelter in the UNRWA schools there have been reportedly killed or suffered serious injuries

Houthi rebels hijack Israeli-linked ship in Red Sea, take 25 crew hostage

Yemen's Houthi rebels seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in a crucial Red Sea shipping route on Sunday, officials said, taking over two dozen crew members hostage and raising fears that regional tensions heightened over the Israel-Hamas war were playing out on a new maritime front. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they hijacked the ship over its connection to Israel and took the crew as hostages. The group warned that it would continue to target ships in international waters that were linked to or owned by Israelis until the end of Israel's campaign against Gaza's Hamas rulers. All ships belonging to the Israeli enemy or that deal with it will become legitimate targets, the Houthis said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office had blamed the Houthis for the attack on the Bahamas-flagged Galaxy Leader, a vehicle carrier affiliated with an Israeli billionaire. It said the 25 crew members had a range of nationalities, including Bulgarian, Filipino, Mexican and Ukrainian,

Israel announces brief suspension of military activities in Rafah city

The Rafah border crossing is the only access point in and out of Gaza that is not controlled by Israel

Israel-Hamas war: Death toll from Oct 7 music festival massacre reaches 350

Another 40 attendees of the all-night rave were taken to Gaza as hostages

Biden stands firm against ceasefire, condemns West Bank violence in op-ed

In the op-ed, Biden also said that a two-state solution is the only solution to the enduring conflict in the region and that, in the meantime, there should be governance under Palestinian Authority

Netanyahu faces battles on multiple fronts amid calls to free hostages

"We cannot allow ourselves to have a prime minister who has lost the public's trust, whether from a social or a security point of view," Lapid told Israel's Channel 12, according to CNN

Air defences intercept missile launched from Lebanon: Israel Defence Forces

The Israeli military said that "no crossing into Israeli territory was detected." It further said that the alerts were triggered by the interceptions, according to The Times of Israel report

War Cabinet to allow 'very minimal' amount of fuel into Gaza: Israel's NSA

Israel's national security adviser says the country's War Cabinet has agreed to allow two tanker trucks of fuel to enter the Gaza Strip each day a quantity he described as very minimal. Speaking at a news conference on Friday, Tzachi Hanegbi said the fuel would be allowed for Gaza's communications system and water and sewage services. He said the aim is to prevent the spread of disease without disrupting Israel's ability to continue its war against the Hamas militant group. Hanegbi said the fuel amounted to roughly 2 per cent to 4 per cent of the normal quantities of fuel that entered Gaza before the war erupted on October 7.

Aid to Gaza halted with communications down for 2nd day, supplies dwindle

Communications systems in the Gaza Strip were down for a second day Friday with no fuel to power the internet and phone networks, causing aid agencies to halt cross-border deliveries of humanitarian supplies even as they warned people may soon face starvation. Israel has been pushing deeper into Gaza City, and its troops have been searching Gaza's biggest hospital, Shifa, for traces of a Hamas command center the military alleges was located under the building. They have displayed images of what they said were a tunnel entrance and weapons found in a truck inside the compound but not yet any evidence of the command center, which Hamas and Shifa staff deny existed. The war, now in its sixth week, was triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, in which the militants killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and captured some 240 men, women and children. Gaza is now receiving only 10% of its needed food supplies daily, and dehydration and malnutrition are growing with

Internet collapses in Gaza, threatening to worsen humanitarian crisis

Internet and telephone services collapsed across the Gaza Strip on Thursday for lack of fuel, the main Palestinian provider said, bringing a potentially long-term communications blackout even as Israel signalled its offensive against Hamas could next target the south of the territory, where most of the population has taken refuge. Meanwhile, Israeli troops for a second day searched Shifa Hospital in the north for traces of Hamas. They displayed guns they say were hidden in one building, but have yet to release any evidence of a central Hamas command centre that Israel has said is concealed beneath the complex. Hamas and staff at the hospital, Gaza's largest, deny the allegations. The military said it found the body of one of the hostages abducted by Hamas, 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss, in a building adjacent to Shifa, where it said it also found assault rifles and RPGs. It did not give the cause of her death. The communications breakdown largely cuts off Gaza's 2.3 million people from

Hamas-Israel conflict: India calls for de-escalation of situation, again

With Israel continuing its military offensive in Gaza in retaliation to last month's attacks by Hamas, India on Thursday once again called for de-escalating the situation and underlined the need for observing international humanitarian law in the face of increasing civilian casualties in the conflict. External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said at his weekly media briefing that India is looking at sending more humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people. Israel has been carrying out a massive military operation in Gaza following the unprecedented and multi-pronged attacks on Israeli cities by Hamas militants on October 7. Asked about New Delhi's view on Israeli troops undertaking an operation at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Bagchi said the issue is not about one particular facility and that India has always underlined the need for following international law. "The issue is not about one facility or a specific facility. India has always underlined the nee

Israel releases video of 'Hamas weapons' at Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital

Israeli Defense Forces continue operation at Al-Shifa Hospital, allege it is a Hamas command centre